Ottawa WordPress Metup Group

I just found out by way of Rick from r3df.com that there is now also a Meetup group for Ottawa WordPressers – http://www.meetup.com/The-Ottawa-WordPress-Group

Their last meetup was in September, but hopefully another one will be scheduled before the year is out to see more of the fine folks in the local community come together to talk about the ‘Press.

Meetup – Thurs Oct 1st at 6:30pm @ The Code Factory

Just as it felt like we were hitting our stride of long warm summer nights, the calendar rolls over to the first month of fall. While kids bemoan the “back to school” vibe that is pushed out in advertising everywhere, web geeks recognize the colder temperatures  and lack of evening light as opportunity to pick-up our side projects that were put on hiatus for the joys of summer.

Our first WDGO meetup at the beginning of the summer was a great and social success. In addition to praise and thanks fr instigating it, the common question / comment I received following that first meetup was that people would like the experience to be more engaging from a design / development perspective. So we’re going to host the second event at THE place in Ottawa for like-minded entrepreneurials / geeks to get their synergies on – The Code Factory. A suggested $5 / person constribution applies.

Meeting Details

WHEN: Thursday October 1st, 2009 – 6:30 to 8:30

WHERE: The Code Factory (246 Queen Street, Second Floor, Between Bank and Kent above Green Papaya)

No properly organized event would be complete without an agenda! Here are the topics that have been most requested:

1. Discussion on what each of us would like WDGO to be?
   Put on your visionary thinking caps to ponder where you see the Ottawa WP deve community in five years. I won’t steal his thunder, but Manu from Oak Computing blew my mind with an event idea that could be a great way for WDGO to announce its presence more formally within the open source community of Ottawa.
2. Discussion on how we can help make that happen?
   A chance to share what skills, time, resources, etc each of us have to contribute to making that vision a reality.
3. Discussion on what want in a WDGO website?
   While this wp.com based site is sufficient for the time being, it does not do a lot to show off our communal skills on the WordPress platform. I own wpdevgroup.org which I would happily contribute / host if people want to share the development activities to build it into the domain / web presence for this group. A job board has been mentioned quite a lot, and I already receive a few requests for resources per month. What other features / functionality are people most interested in.
4. What dates are best / worst for your schedule if we were to aim to meet monthly?
   
5. Demo your WP-based projects / sites
   Either solicite feedback or support from the WP ninjas in the mix. If you would like to demo a site, please contact me directly to pre-book  a spot with a brief description of what type of feedback you’re hoping to get.
6. Any other topics that people would like to discuss?

Historical Note: If you read up on the history of Labour Day in Canada you’ll find that it was a typographical union – aka designers – who were instrumental in the shift towards a standardized work week that Labour Day pays homage to. These same groups are again the vanguard of a new generation searching for a better work / life balance, this time with tools / technology that support communicating and working remotely, two things which the WordPress software and community surrounding it are grand examples of.

WordPress work for you at Ottawa U!

Marc Andre Plouffe let me know, bilingually, that there is a job-posting for Ottawa U’s Faculty of Education which is WordPress-centric.

We are currently looking for a web expert at the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa to join our marketing team. The ideal person should be a strong programmer and marketer. Must be bilingual. We use WordPress as CMS, experience in plugin dev an asset. Check out http://www.hr.uottawa.ca/careers/support/competition/cont/edu/TEDU9463NEP.php for details. I’ve had the position for 1.5 year and really enjoyed it.

Nous sommes à la recherche d’un expert web à la Faculté d’éducation de l’Université d’Ottawa pour se joindre à notre équipe marketing. La personne idéale excelle en programmation et en marketing. Poste bilingue. Nous utilisons WordPress come SGC et un expérience dans le développement de plugicels est un atout. Consultez http://www.rh.uottawa.ca/carrieres/soutien/concours/cont/edu/TEDU9463NEP.php. J’ai occupé le poste pendant un an et demi et vraiment adoré.

WordPress resource required for startup site

I received an email from a startup company that is looking for assistance to implement a Theme Forest WordPress template – Twicet Business & Portfolio Template – for their site.

I would like to offload the actual coding, etc. to someone who knows what they are doing and can work with me to get the site done. We need to turn this into a corporate website with multiple products (not a portfolio but individual product pages). Timeframe is immediate and preferred budget is around $400-600.

Please reply either by comment or email to jamie [AT] idealienstudios.com with a link to your portfolio that I can forward it on to the client who will get in touch with interested parties.

This is not the first request for WordPress developers that I have received since instigating WDGO. A job board is definitely a core piece of functionality to be considered for the new community site. Until that is built, I will typically tweet an initial request for resources via the @WDGO twitter account before posting to the site.

The Wordcamp Phenomenom

[Wordcamps] are are generallly inexpensive or free, its all about community led, it’s people sharing their knowledge, what they’ve learned….I like that they are local as well. Something that is typically lost in the open source world is just the idea of going to a bar and getting a drink with someone in your neighbourhood.

This quote is from a 90-second video (included below) of Matt Mullenweg talking about the Wordcamp Phenomenom courtesy of Amicalmant, who attended and enjoyed his experiences at the Wordcamp Montreal event. For those who have never heard of a Wordcamp, it is a “conference that focuses on everything WordPress. WordCamps are informal, community-organized events that are put together by WordPress users like you. Everyone from casual users to core developers participate, share ideas, and get to know each other.”

These core concepts – sharing knowledge, inexpensive / free participation, local – are the exact same principles behind my efforts to start the Ottawa WordPress Developer Group. The primary goal being “to grow and support the local community of individuals and organizations who have an interest in working with WordPress in hopes of building stronger relationships within that community to the benefit of the entire community”. This is a natural extension of what Matt says in conclusion of his interview, that the logistical limitation of Wordcamps is that they only happen once per year.

I think technology is best not when it replaces human interaction but when it augments it. So the fact that we are a shared tribe of people here, who love and care about WordPress and got together for a weekend to talk about that is awesome! There will be friendships formed this weekend and things that develop this weekend that I hope will carry on through the rest of the year.

To find out if there is a Wordcamp happening soon near you or where you will be, check out http://central.wordcamp.org/schedule/.

Why a local dev group?

Just a couple of tweets or email snippets that I’ve gotten over the last few days from people excited about having a local developer group for WordPress in Ottawa:

• “I’ve been dying to find someone who I don’t have to explain WordPress to before I can actually get the to root of the issues I’ve had.”
• “I am definitely liking the capabilities and opportunities that WordPress present so I’m always interested in learning more.”
• “I strongly feel that all of us – who recognize WordPress’s potential – can truly create a niche for ourselves through a stronger more formalized evangelism initiative”
• “I hopefully will be able to go to a future event. I followed you on twitter to keep up to date as this is something I am interested in.”

1st WDGO Pub Night Recap

I just got back from the first Pub Night for the WordPress Developer Group of Ottawa and am overjoyed at the great group of people who came out. The conversations covered many fronts and everyone was highly enthusiastic about more events happening again soon. Some random conversation highlights:

• Several expressed an interest in presentation(s) on how to customize WordPress to provide “non-blog” capabilities. I gave a summary of the potential that More Fields and my own Idealien Category Enhancements offer to create customized write panels with configured meta data (using custom fields behind the scenes) on the admin side and category/post driven templates on the presentation side. I’m already planning to put together a more detailed video tutorial on Idealien Studios later this week.
• We discussed some of the pros / cons of WordPress in comparison to other open source CMS platforms that people had experience with. The concensus was that WordPress was the simplest solution (if only from a volume of database tables) and that anybody / everybody could use the admin console out of the box.
• Some discussion about the level of interactivity at / following Wordcamps in different cities that each of us had attended. All agreed that there a need for more local WordPress-oriented activities. This went on a great tangent into the challenges that any/all Ottawa-based communities have to get continued active involvement from their participants. No conclusions reached, but heresay about it being a government town or “something in the water” were highly persuasive
• Several of the folks from Oak Computing came out and were just as passionate, if not moreso, about the power/potential of the platform of WordPress as I am. Manu tentatively volunteered to lead the organization of a subsequent WDGO event which is fantastic!

I was unsure going into this event how much others would want to run with the concepts I was trying to instigate. But the conversations had as we settled our bills and parted ways all reflected a shared interest in making the WordPress Developer Group of Ottawa grow. The tentative plan is to schedule another event in early August that has a “social” focus and built upon that into the fall with a series of events focused more on the education and evangalism of WordPress. A great big word of thanks to all who came out to enjoy the evening!

Word on the street is that the next event might be a Poker Night! Details TBD but enthusiasm / suggestions are always appreciated.

WDGO Pub Night is a go!

Just a confirmation that location, date and time originally planned for the 1st Pub Night for WordPress Developer Group of Ottawa is a go. 8pm at Shoeless Joe’s (3049 Carling Ave). It’s cheap wing night too! I’ve heard from 5 – 7 people already indicating they’re going to be there:

• Eric from danceric.net
• Marc-André who organized the first Ottawa Web Weekend
• Dave & Manu from Oak Computing
• Rick from r-cubed.ca

Plus a few other “Non-committal Nancies” could show up.
Look for the table with the big WordPress logo!

Ottawa WP Developers Pub Night – Tues July 7th, 2009

I have consulted the oracles, in this case Ian at The Code Factory and Chris of Teamcamp.ca, to determine that starting full developer night meetings during the summer is not the best course of action. There are too many fests (blues, jazz, etc) to be enjoyed, vacations to be taken, cottages to be visited and such during the summer months. However, pub nights work no matter what time of year and go a long way towards building the community base for the future.

With that in mnd, I propose that Tuesday July 7th, 2009 be the first Ottawa WordPress Developers Pub Night. Location and time are subject to interest from the community. Current theory is a start time of 8pm at Shoeless Joe’s at 3049 Carling Ave which has cheap wing night on Tues and very nice booths.

There are several ways you can make your preference / interest known:

• Blog Comment
  It’s somewhat hard to see but there is a ‘reply’ button in the right sidebar of this page (or if you click on the title of this post). Add a comment and I’ll keep you in the loop.
• Twitter
  Follow @wdgo on Twitter and tweet your preference(s). In general, this is probably the best way to stay up-to-date with those who live in Ottawa with an active interest in WordPress until the full / robust website for our community is launched.
• Email
  Email jamie [AT] idealienstudios.com with your preferences. I’ll send out an email to everyone who emails me by Monday afternoon with the location / time as well as putting up a new post on this site.

What’s in a (domain) name?

I initially chose ottawadevelopers.wordpress.com as the temporary website for the WordPress Developers Group of Ottawa (WDGO) for a few reasons:

• It had all of the important keywords for this community-driven project
• I had never used wordpress.com site and wanted to see how it compared to wp.org based version
• I couldn’t come up with a great domain name but wanted to start with something

I now have had experience with wp.com and have confirmed my suspicions – it does not make sense to use for this situation. While I do not fault Automattic for their business model, it is laughable to think that a developer group, well-versed in the art of wp.org based installations, would pay $14.97 / month for customized css access or $29.97 for unlimited user access to the blog.

Which leaves us with the third bullet point – what domain name makes sense to use for this group? I’ve scouted a few oriented around wdgo, but as expected most 4-letter acronymns were taken up long ago in the web land grab. So the poll for this week is to solicit suggested domain names. I can provide hosting for the site if you happen to feel like taking a $10 dollar flyer on registering a good potential site name.